kalpurna

My sister-in-law had her second baby! His name is Theodore, a name which USED to convey to me fat little boys with glasses and mustachioed old men, but which will from now on equal pure cool. And they are planning to call him "Teddy," a name which I'm guessing he will bitterly resent by the time he hears his 5067th stuffed-bear-related joke. I personally plan to move on to "Theo" by the time he's talking, so as to decisively stake out my position of Cool Aunt. If I follow through on my intentions to name my own first daughter Eleanor, we will have a very Roosevelty family.

I was tagged by both shihadchick AND aukestrel to answer the "how did you get your username" meme, so clearly, the People Have Spoken. I'm so glad this meme is going around, even if mine isn't all that interesting. I tend to invest things like usernames with tremendous significance – it's the first thing people see about you! It even defines the location you can be found at on the interwebs! It's first name, last name, home address, and novel title all rolled into one! So after lurking in fandom for a good two years or so, when I finally decided to get an LJ, I had to have THE PERFECT USERNAME. I didn't articulate this at the time, but in retrospect, I'd say that these were the characteristics I was looking for:

• Something approaching Google-exclusivity (no other significant results)


• Memorable


• Easy to pronounce


• Sounds like a real name, but isn't


• Conveys no information other than identity to most people


• Therefore, doesn't reflect an interest or fandom which might change over time


• Likely to remain unclaimed at most websites requiring registration

Eventually I found a Sanskrit-English dictionary, and after some more faffing about, I decided to go with "kalpana," meaning "fantasy," since it seemed appropriate and sounded nice. But in between my reading this word in the dictionary and my registering the name on LJ, I managed to mix up some letters, and ended up with kalpurna. I immediately found that not only did I like this name better on aesthetic grounds, but it actually did a better job of satisfying my bullet points – especially the Google-exclusivity one. There's only one other non-me result you get from googling my username, and it's a passage from some obscure sci-fi novel. Perfection! I love my username SO much. ♥

Honestly, I want to hear EVERYONE'S explanations of this, because it completely fascinates me. So if you haven't posted an explanation yet, consider yourself tagged!